The relocation of HR functions is causing concern among jobseekers despite a significant return of confidence to the HR and safety job market.
The relocation of HR employees is causing concern among jobseekers despite a significant return of confidence to the HR and safety job market.
While on-hold recruitment springs into life, and job creation volumes improve, many heavy industry organisations have begun reassessing the physical locations of their human resources employees.
According to the latest Robert Walters market update, this has resulted in positions with a regional remit or that had previously been site-based – such as recruitment, learning and development and generalist human resources roles – being relocated back to head offices.
Cassandra Barker, consultant, HR at Robert Walters in Brisbane, told HR Leader that candidates are fearing that a lack of visibility on-site would diminish their operational effectiveness and ability to create the most effective people strategies.
“We’ve noticed in the past nine months, especially in the mining, engineering and construction sectors, that employers have tried to cut costs by centralising their HR teams.
“This doesn’t mean redundancies, but companies are seeing it as beneficial to have all HR functions acting out of one location. Some candidates are very sceptical of this behaviour; they have seen it happen before but then change back to being de-centralised.”
The report shows that across all industries, specialist areas such as learning and organisational development experienced a considerable increase in activity as employers moved to strengthen their workforce and position themselves for further growth and increasing competition.
However, the market continued to experience a shortage of qualified safety specialists at all levels in quarter three.
Robert Walters found that organisations were expecting candidates to be degree qualified, or if not degree qualified, to have completed a Workplace Health & Safety Officer (WHSO) qualification, a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment or courses and certificates relevant to their area of expertise.
